Policy discourses and socially situated participation in education

This paper discusses how participation in education has been affected by current educational policy assumptions that emphasise rational, cognitive decision-making and individual choice within an economistic discourse. It draws on a study of students participating in a ‘health issues in the community’ programme (reported on in Allan and Tett, 2005) to explore both how policy changes have influenced provision and how the subjective experience of engaging in education is bound up with other life events and experiences